The term "rubber duck debugging" means talking out loud about a problem you're facing in your program. If you aren't able to talk about the problem to another person, it's just as helpful to talk to a prop—traditionally, a rubber duck. It's a common term within software engineering.

I've been kicking around the idea of writing my own table-top RPG game. Ever since I started running my own D&D games, I have had ideas about how to change the rules to make them better; or at least make them a better fit for the kind of game I enjoy running. However, I don't have a lot of experience with different TTRPGs. I needed some inspiration—someone to pitch me ideas and let me judge them against my own assumptions.

AI was the perfect tool for this.

In the "rubber duck debugging" scenario, I wanted to be the rubber duck. I wanted to give a general description of my ideas, and then have someone else (or someTHING else) pitch ideas back to me. Google's Gemini, with its enormous corpus of data, was a great companion in this excercise. I use "companion" deliberately. At the end of its answers, Gemini asked follow-up questions that I could respond to. Sometimes it tried to take the conversation in a direction I didn't want to go, but that was fine. I could steer the conversation where I wanted, and the sycophantic AI happy to follow where I led.

As a software developer by trade and training, I've found AI to be very useful in my work. AI can handle must of the repetitive, "boilerplate-y" work that comes with building software. It can greatly improve your productivity so long as you understand the limits of what it can do. I prompted Gemini to pitch me ideas and offer suggestions based on them. The ideas it produced weren't half bad, though still rough. With time, I'll be able to enhance these ideas further into something I will be proud to publish.

The Theory of Magic

There are three kinds of magic in my game: Arcanism, Faith, and Psionics.

Arcanism is the use and control of the seven elements of Primordia: Terra, Hydros, Ignis, Aura, Fulgur, Cryos, and Vitriol. Arcanists and other arcane magic casters manipulate these elements to produce various magical effects. These effects are permanent. When an arcanist raises a wall of stone or creates a blast of fire, they are anchoring the raw substance of the elements to the world to produce the magical effect.

Faith involves aligning your spirit to one of the five Pillars of Creation on the plane of Celestia. The five pillars are: the Radiance, the Umbral, the Axiom, the Discord, and the Wyrd. Heralds and other faith casters will often describe the pillars as "chorus" or "vibration" rather than something physical. When their spirit is properly aligned, heralds manifest many different kinds of miracles and effects to the world. These miracles could be healing the sick and wounded, or banishing an enemy to another plane.

Finally there is psionics. Whereas arcanism and faith draw their power from the planes of Primordia and Celestia respectively, psionic magic is drawn from within the practitioner themselves. Psionic magic focuses on how the other kinds of magic interact in the world. There are four forces of psionic magic: Soul, Spark, Resonance, and Void. Adepts and other psionic casters channel these forces through one of three apertures: their mind, their body, or their spirit. Unlike arcanism, psionic magic is temporary. Adepts must lock psionic magic to an aperture in order to concentrate on the effect and extend its duration.

The three forms of magic shape the natural world. A common metaphor used to describe them is that arcanism is the paint, faith is the brush, and psionics is the canvas. At a deeper level, however, the three kinds of magic are merely different facets of the same thing.

I upcoming blog posts, I will dive deeper into each of the three kinds of magic. I'll try to work through how each kind of spellcaster uses their magical power, and I'll try to work out how to balance magic for both in- and out-of-combat uses. I will also explain more about the planes and how each came into being, and how they affect the respective kinds of magic that they influence.

And hopefully I'll get to that sooner rather than later!